Planet evolt.org
November 13, 2005
Cathy and myself have just finished watching Episodes I to VI over the weekend. First two on Friday night, middle two last night, you get the picture.
Some quick observations now I've finally seen all six in a row:
- The back-story really breathes new life into the original trilogy, having the history of the characters to refer to makes such a big difference (god I'm such a geek)
- The original trilogy is a much smaller, character driven story
- Palpatine is a devious shit, but you have to admire his cunning
- The Episode III to IV transition works really well story and character wise, but the 70's model work is really jarring after coming from the CG battles of the prequel. It's especially noticeable during the first attack on the Death Star
- ...but in saying that, the space battle in Return of the Jedi still rocks
- You know there's going to be a new box set at some point, and I bet my Boba Fett Pez dispenser that there will further tinkering from George to make the segue between trilogies a little more seamless.
- In the big scheme of things Jar-Jar isn't that annoying, he can be filtered, but jesus his sense of humour is crap. He's just not funny
- After seeing serious solemn Yoda in the prequels, his behaviour when he first appears in Empire makes him look like he's gone bat-shit loopy. Trust me, watch it when he first appears, he's acting like an insane man
- These words are not in the OSX spell-checker: Jedi, Yoda, Boba Fett
- ... they are now, I may need to talk more about them and the red squiggly lines were annoying me
- R2-D2 swears a lot
- The re-mastered trilogy are really dark compared to the prequels. I don't know if this is due to the re-mastering process or just the difference between film and digital, but they look very underexposed
- Cathy went "awww" when the Ewoks got shot. She needs help
- Ewan McGregor really nailed Alec Guinness. I find myself stroking my chin when I'm thinking now, in an Obi-Wan style. This is not good
- It works, I loved it
Doing it all again at christmas, woohoo!
November 13, 2005 11:43 PM
November 10, 2005
November 09, 2005
..it's just meat and centrafugal forces!
(zombizi prime, via the Flapface group on flickr.)
November 09, 2005 11:17 PM
November 07, 2005
November 05, 2005
I’m pleased to announce that the small seminar we organized for World Usability Day in Santiago was a wonderful success. As organizers, we planned for only three hours and we didn’t know what to expect in terms of audience: we were very satisfied by the quality of the presentations and the participation of the audience, [...]
by mantruc at November 05, 2005 02:45 PM
November 04, 2005
November 02, 2005
November 01, 2005
So while I was away I turned 30 (more about that later when I can string a coherent sentence together), but more importantly I was asked by a Wikipedia editor if they could use a picture I took of my camera for the corresponding entry on Wikipedia.
Now that's much more fun and newsworthy than turning 30 dontcha think *:)
November 01, 2005 12:35 PM
October 26, 2005
October 21, 2005
How much stock do we put in global navigation and could those resources be better spent elsewhere? Quite possibly according to Jared Spool at UIE.com.
Maybe they'll click on the global navigation on the home page (however, probably not, if the page is well designed). Then they'll never click on it again, because, after all, they are now looking for local information - not global information
We've observed that it's almost always the case that if a user is clicking on global navigation, it's because they are completely lost.
Having global navigation isn't a bad thing. It's just not something that should garner a lot of resources, as it's unlikely to be important in the user experience.
Here's something interesting to think about. How much of a role does the global navigation play in orientating first time users to the site before they get to the local content? Isn't that a useful thing and worth spending time on? As a friend said to me last night: "You don't get a second chance to make a first impression".
And I wonder does this differ between the web as software interface and the web as hypertext system? Look at flickr's use of global navigation - the frequented destinations at the top and the big-fat-footer (I just made that up) - both of which I know I use a lot.
I'd ponder more, but I'm on holiday in 2 hours. Woo!
Hat tip: guuui.com
October 21, 2005 02:26 PM
October 19, 2005
Chick Young says something I actually agree with after Scotland's slow international fitba recovery continued with our failure to qualify for Germany 2006. No, I don't want to see Walter Smith's head on a platter, I just wish we could win the right games at the right times :(
by neuro at October 19, 2005 12:11 PM
October 17, 2005
Great article with 23 tips on how McAfee cut their support calls by 90% for a new product, by focusing on user-centered design.
Hat tip: guuui.com
October 17, 2005 09:39 PM
October 16, 2005
October 14, 2005
October 12, 2005
Apple just played their hand. An iMac with a remote control and home entertainment software. Why is no-one else talking about this? All the feeds I'm looking at right now are talking about the video iPod ... fuck the video iPod, look out for the updates to Front Row, here comes the digital hub, and it's going to be as easy to use as an Mac.
Update: Mr Gruber has his groove on, as usual.
The full-screen UI of Front Row is just begging to be hooked up to a TV. Begging. Now that there exists a "video iPod", the next new "Apple has to be working on this" mega-rumor is going to revolve around how Apple plans to bring this Front Row UI to your TV. What’s interesting about this is that while Apple has a reputation for making spectacular announcements, their long-term strategy for a media entertainment platform is unfolding incrementally.
October 12, 2005 11:11 PM
Summer flitted past with barely a backward glance, and there I was, gawking in its wake. The rain encouraged...
by sniffles at October 12, 2005 04:44 AM
October 11, 2005
One of the most significant success factors in building a high-performing team is how much the team members trust each other. This is generally much, much harder in virtual teams than face to face ones (although experience with evolt suggests that ongoing realtime communication over IRC bridges the gap quite nicely). This article shows some of the elements that can be used as stepping stones to high trust virtual teams.
by martin at October 11, 2005 05:44 PM
I'm currently doing a course in project finances, so I'm doing my usual 'best way to understand it is to write bits up up for other people' thing. I've submitted it to evolt.org too, but it might be too far from the coding track for some to handle. I know there's a quite a few members who are migrating towards running projects and businesses who might appreciate it, though.
by martin at October 11, 2005 03:09 PM
October 09, 2005
October 04, 2005
Media Week was redesigned and rebuilt in Plone ( we used Plone at their request, nightmare that it was notwithstanding) about 14 months ago.
Subsequently they’ve been bought by Haymarket and re-done the site again, this time apparently using Fusebox/Cold Fusion (which is fine, it’s probably a house default)…
…and, apart from breaking it quite badly by adding a different footer, they’ve kept the exact same design and style sheets.
So… you can imagine exactly how bloody amused I am by this:
I’ll pass over the irony of how adding this fraudulent crap to the footer is the actual reason why the layout’s now broken, and instead just state this for the record:
No, you bloody did not do the site design. This person did comps, and I did the work. Including the CSS files which you’re still using, even having gone so far as to make your new app spit out IDs and class names which match those in Plone exactly in order to not have to re-do them yourselves. So if you wouldn’t mind not lying about that, I’d appreciate it. And if, while you’re at it, you’d care to unbreak the layout, that’d be nice too.
Update, the next day: The offending button has been removed surreptitiously this afternoon. They haven’t bothered to reply to the nice email I sent them, though. Nor fixed the layout, which remains hideously broken.
October 04, 2005 03:00 PM
October 03, 2005
September 29, 2005
September 26, 2005
One of the most curious news these days in Chile is the claim that a famous treasure has been found. The place is Robinson Crusoe Island, about 500 miles east of Valparaiso.
This is the actual island where the sailor Alexander Selkirk was abandoned in amidst the Pacific Ocean, only to be picked four years [...]
by mantruc at September 26, 2005 09:10 PM
September 25, 2005
September 22, 2005
I'm giving feedburner another whirl. I tried it a while back, specifically to make use of the feed splicing feature, but I quickly gave up as I was finding it a little clunky. For no other reason than I like to tinker I've switched it back on again.
So if there is anyone out there reading this in an RSS reader I'd appreciate it you could update your feed to this one.
September 22, 2005 02:11 PM
I'm off on holiday tomorrow, back to beautiful Montréal. Depending on the schedule, updates here may be few and far between, but no matter what you can count on my flickr stream being regularly updated.
While I'm out there I'll be doing a little bit of work (we've had a nightmare couple of weeks with regard to hardware problems) and I'm hoping to finalise the design for polytechnic — you may have noticed small changes creeping in here and there, look ma! colour! — but if I make no promises, then you can't be disappointed.
September 22, 2005 01:52 PM
September 21, 2005
September 19, 2005
